The find and replace feature is commonly found in software application program modules to manage the complexities in medium to large documents and data stores. Although most every software application provides some find and replace capability, there is a need for a find and replace feature with ease of use, flexibility in searching, and utility of searching. For example, in most spreadsheet program modules, the find feature is limited to displaying one result at a time and the results of find and replace features are difficult to manage. For example, if the user is searching for a particular instance of a term, the user must navigate through multiple instances of the term to reach the particular instance desired.
A problem with spreadsheet find and replace features is the inability to perform bulk formatting operations. Bulk formatting refers to performing find and replace operations on the formatting attributes of a cell rather than the textual or numerical contents of a cell. For example, bulk formatting may include such operations as deleting all red text, searching only secured sections of a document or searching for data types (such as currencies or numbers in scientific notation).
Another drawback of spreadsheet find and replace features is their inability to search across multiple sheets unless each individual sheet is selected. Thus, a user may perform a find operation and expect that they are searching multiple sheets when, in fact, only the active sheet was searched.
Still another drawback of spreadsheet find and replace features is the inability to perform find and replace operations on non-textual elements of cells. For example, changing all the percentages in a worksheet to decimals must be performed manually rather than via an automated find and replace feature.